RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/israel-zionism/2019/12/israel-is-a-tech-superp

The number of AI and cybersecurity startups in Israel makes up close to 20 percent of the world’s total, likely eclipsing China and second only to the United States.

We find ourselves in strong agreement with the two central contentions of Arthur Herman’s valuable new essay in Mosaic, “The Impasse Obstructing U.S.-Israel Relations, and How to Remedy It.” First, China’s growing penetration of Israel’s economy over the past decade, particularly in the high-tech sector, poses real risks to the U.S.-Israel relationship if left unattended. But second, if addressed in a spirit worthy of the profound alliance that has bound these two great liberal democracies together for decades, the China challenge should serve instead as a major opportunity to propel the strategic partnership to new heights.

Indeed, that’s precisely the case that one of us, John Hannah, made in an article earlier this year:

Working together in close consultation, with the protection and strengthening of the alliance uppermost in their minds, [U.S. and Israeli policymakers] should make sure that China becomes the catalyst for the next major leap forward in the U.S.-Israel relationship rather than a dangerous source of division.

Herman is also spot-on in identifying the struggle for technological primacy as the central arena that will shape the geopolitics of the 21st century, in particular the escalating strategic rivalry between, on the one hand, the United States and other free societies, and, on the other hand, China, Russia, and the camp of anti-American authoritarians.

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001891.html

Today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces his biggest political challenge to the leadership of Israel’s ruling Likud party for over a decade, when he will be challenged in a Likud primary leadership contest by Gideon Sa’ar (a former journalist, lawyer and then a government minister). If Netanyahu loses, Sa’ar will likely become interim prime minister.

I attach two pieces below, by Anshel Pfeffer in today’s leading left-wing Israeli paper Haaretz, and by Isabel Kershner in the New York Times, a paper that continues to obsess about Israel and devote enormous amounts of space to scrutinizing the small Jewish state while all but ignoring much of the rest of the world.

Pfeffer is a very knowledgeable journalist though sometimes he allows his disdain for Netanyahu and the Likud to cloud the impartiality of his reporting.

Gideon Sa’ar is unlikely to win today’s vote. However, if he makes a strong challenge, as expected, he will set himself up as the clear favorite to succeed Netanyahu should Netanyahu fail to win the Israeli election on March 2 (the third general election in Israel in less than a year) and Netanyahu is then forced from power. (Sa’ar would likely then form a unity government with Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz.)

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/hanukkah_and_the_occupation_that_isnt.html

It looks like the holidays cannot be complete without warped political messages. Representative Rashida Tlaib, a known anti-Semite, wished the Jews of IfNotNow a happy Hanukkah. In doing so, however, she supported the organization’s 2020 goals of “defunding the occupation in Falestine [sic] and fighting antisemitism and white nationalism.” IfNotNow claims it is “building a movement of Jews to end Israel’s occupation and transform the American Jewish community.” It also has extensive ties to American Muslims for Palestine, an organization in turn founded by groups that the U.S. government has claimed financed Hamas.

Tlaib and IfNotNow are attempting to accomplish what the Greeks tried and ultimately failed to do many years ago — deny the Jews religious and sovereign rights in their ancestral homeland of Judea and Samaria.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/happy-hanukkah-from-trump-and-johnson/

Politicians across the globe have been issuing holiday greetings in public statements and on social media. It’s a standard practice every December, particularly when Hanukkah and Christmas actually coincide, as they do now.

This year is exceptional, however, with two world leaders conveying much more than conventionally sappy, Hallmark card-like messages to Jews celebrating the Festival of Lights. Yes, U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson each bestowed a gift befitting of the story and celebration of Hanukkah—the defeat of Antiochus and his attempt to Hellenize Jews and wipe out Judaism.

Trump’s present, which he delivered at the annual White House Hanukkah party, was the Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism. Its stated aim is to stamp out the growing Jew-hatred on American college campuses by warning educational institutions that tolerating such behavior would result in the withholding of government funding (i.e., taxpayers’ money) from them.

Though the president’s crucial document is under attack by a number of groups, including Never Trumpers, BDS supporters and left-wing Jews with a convoluted view of the E.O.’s contents, it is about as close to a Hanukkah miracle as one can get these days.

Trump’s move came less than a week after the landslide victory of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson over Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose fostering of anti-Semitism in his party was so blatant that even longtime Jewish supporters were unable to deny it.